


Beyond Desperate Measures

by secretagentfan



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Humor, Multi, Tales of Xillia Week, They're Dead But They're Fine Trust Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26304355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretagentfan/pseuds/secretagentfan
Summary: Ludger buys a haunted house. He's trying not think about it too hard, but the house's ghostly occupants are making that a bit of a challenge. Who are they, how did they die, and what do they want with a broke chef?{Xillia Week Day 5: Liminal | Family}
Relationships: Alvin & Elize Lutus, Elize Lutus & Ludger Will Kresnik, Ghostly Family dynamics, Implied Chronos/Origin, Jude Mathis & Ludger Will Kresnik, Rowen J. Ilbert & Ludger Will Kresnik
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Tales of Xillia Week





	Beyond Desperate Measures

**Author's Note:**

> Man this was supposed to be a 1000 word-ish drabble but it sure did go off the rails, and now it's my longest one-shot to date! Hooray!
> 
> Written for Xillia Week. I sort of ignored the whole "clime" part and leaned right into "liminal".

**Origin – illness – 1910**

The mansion’s original owner was an eccentric orphan that claimed to be in love with the spirit of time. With no friends or family to speak of, he spent his life quietly advancing the field of botanical medicine. Neighbors recognized him from his controversial habit of leaving his mansion’s windows open wide, day or night.

“It’s for my little birds,” he would explain, and sure enough, small birds flitted in and out of his home without fear.

An odd man, but a nice one - always ready with a gentle word, or airy comment. Those around him boxed their concerns away and whispered behind closed doors - as people often do when someone they know is endearing, but completely mad.

As he grew older and took to bed, he appeared less often in town. When he stopped making the journey to pick up his usual groceries, few batted an eye, remembering how pale and frail-looking he was near the end.

Years later however, strangers walking by his old abandoned mansion would occasionally report the sight of a candle burning steadily behind one of the still-open windows.

The wax never seemed to melt.

**Ludger – N/A – 2020**

  
Ludger Will Kresnik had bought a mansion. It was an accident.

The place was much, much, bigger than _Craigslist_ made it out to be, and the fact Ludger could afford it on his budget – a budget that was supposed to pay for a one-bedroom apartment in the city – was…well…

Ludger was not going to overthink it. Hell, he wasn’t going to regular-think it. _Thinking_ was a luxury possessed by people with _options_ and he was fresh out of those. He had bought the place, sight unseen, because this was it. This _was_ the last option. The breaking point. The only house he could feasibly afford to live in while completing his apprenticeship, and he could not - absolutely _could not_ \- afford to think about how _terrifying_ it was.

A chirping sound in the hallway made Ludger grimace. He exhaled the longest sigh of his life and pulled his sleeping bag tighter around himself. The house had a terrific bird problem exacerbated by the fact that some of the windows on the upper levels were stuck open. Ludger had spent all afternoon grunting and groaning, trying to shut the one in his bedroom – it took nearly dislocating his shoulder to get the damned thing to finally close.

Instead of thinking, Ludger came up with excuses. Excuses were much easier, and much more calming. Every evening, Ludger would lay awake on his little camping spot in the one useable bedroom, stare at the old stained ceiling that could fall at any moment, and count off the reasons why moving here wasn’t a terrible idea.

Excuse 1 - Ludger technically hadn’t purchased the _whole mansion_ because most of the house wasn’t accessible.

He had only purchased what had amounted to a generous entryway, four staircases, a living room, kitchen, and single empty attic room which he had taken to sleeping in. Perfectly reasonable! Sure, it was…undeniably odd that the rest of the mansion’s doors were all locked tight, and extra odd that the owner didn’t have keys to them anymore…but…

Excuse 2 - The old owner didn’t care what happened to the place!

He had put the barely furnished mansion up for sale for a steal, after all. The place had been neglected for who knows how long, and was begging to be gutted, broken down, and rebuilt. It needed one of those house-hunting shows Julius liked to watch where a lovely couple would come in and fix the place up for the current owners.

Ludger had already reached out to HGTV. He thought he might have been a good contestant for one of those charity episodes those shows always had. He had the qualifications: poor, always a little hungry, drowning in student loan debt from a fake online college. The real cincher, though, the real coup-de-grâce that would make him a shoo-in for a tear-jerker episode was the fact he was fighting to support his unexpectedly adopted daughter. A complicated story he’d happily sell to Hollywood…allowing that they kept Elle’s name and face out of it.

Unfortunately, HGTV hadn’t e-mailed him back. He was on his own.

Excuse 3 – Ludger really _needed_ this place.

He had applied for the apprenticeship at _Wonderchef Kitchens_ even though it was far away from home because the odds of him getting in were about as likely as a coin landing on its side. He hadn’t meant for it to seriously work.

He hadn’t meant for Elle and Julius to practically shove him out of their house saying, “it’s a just for a year Ludger, go on, _follow your dream_ ”. He hadn’t meant for any of this - but there was no way in hell Ludger was going to put his family’s hard work to waste just because he couldn’t find a place to stay.

Excuse 4 – Julius was never going to find out.

Hero-of-every-hour-competent-businessman Julius Kresnik did not have to know _anything_. He would definitely have a heart attack if he saw that Ludger had desperately purchased a condemned house two hours away from his apprenticeship. _On Craigslist_.

As far as Julius was concerned, Ludger had managed to rent that apartment right next to _Wonderchef Kitchens_ with his savings. That respectable apartment had taken one look at Ludger’s bank account and shoved him out the front door. No amount of “I once worked for Spirius Corporation—yes the one on the news all the time— no _really_ —” was able to convince them that Ludger was going to make their rent on time.

Excuse 5 – Ludger could fix this. Eventually.

Ludger never felt fully comfortable being taken care of. Julius had been supporting him for way too long. He guided him through numerous tragedies and plain bad luck with a nonjudgmental and accepting smile that made Ludger want to hold his head and scream.

Guilt lived under his skin as naturally as blood, fat, and muscle. It had settled right next to his heart and made itself comfortable like a family of termites in rotten wood.

He didn’t want it in him anymore. He wanted to stand on his own, and this was the first step. Julius and Elle had given up so much to allow him to drop everything and pursue this apprenticeship. He couldn’t ask them for more, and he couldn’t fail. He could handle this. He’d have to.

Ludger had done some remodeling gigs in the past, and with enough time, maybe he could even fix this this place up. Maybe he’d manage to get all of the windows to close and find a way to chase the birds away.

After his apprenticeship. After his life was back on track—

_Bang_.

The one window he had shut opened wide. Gentle laughter seemed to echo in the room, or maybe it was just another fresh set of little birds.

Ludger pulled his whole sleeping bag over his head and groaned.

After.

**Rowen - ??? - ???**

Rowen’s past was a true mystery. He spent a lot of time tidying the house, but never dusting. Most of the occupants assumed he had been a butler of some kind.

Elize asked him once. He was reading in the kitchen because the rest of the house had grown a bit too lively for him to focus, ironic, considering no one was living there. The tale he wove her was one of kings, queens, and betrayal, painted with clashing swords and righteous justice. When she had pursed her lips and told him to be honest and tell her how he died, his face changed– the wrinkles under his eyes grew deep as a grave.

“Complications from an old wound, and an even older war,” he replied, closing his book.

He nodded sadly at Elize and straightened up as if preparing for any questions she might ask. Melancholy spread in the air between them like a fog.

“I changed my mind,” Elize decided. She wrapped her arms around the older man in an affectionate hug, which he returned. “I like the stories more.”

He smiled.

 **Ludger – N/A – 2020**

The inside of the house, thankfully, didn’t match the outside. The outside felt murderous, a gothic Godzilla really, but the interiors of the accessible rooms were surprisingly home-like. Ludger spent a lot of time dusting, but rarely picking up. For all its supposed neglect and open windows — the house didn’t really have any leaves or bugs.

Ludger had called Craigslist Guy three times to ask about it, since he claimed he hadn’t visited the place in years, aside from one freak incident where he had to get an abandoned car towed off the front lawn. His eventual, texted, response back had been a useless: _hell if i know maybe the birds maintained it._

_Cleaning birds,_ Ludger thought despondently, looking like regular fairytale maiden with a kerchief over his hair and a broom and dustpan in his hand. _Wouldn’t that be nice._

He was not looking forward to facing off with the kitchen. It had to be pristine, perfect. It was part of his job to practice here, after all. Mimi Baker had already threatened him once to work on his falling soufflés, and he had no doubt that she was the type of person that really would ruin his day if he didn’t take her advice and try some new techniques at home.

A small secret part of Ludger had hoped that the kitchen would be as decently maintained as the rest of the house, but in spite of the quantity of the cookware (someone was ready to serve a _king_ , shit) everything inside was absolutely coated with cobwebs.

“Looks like the birds didn’t clean this one,” Ludger muttered to the messy kitchen. “Time for Cinderella to hop to…”

_Indeed, hop to._

Ludger tensed, looked over his shoulder, but of course no one was there. The thought felt like it came from his own head, but didn’t feel like him. How was that possible?

He cringed; isolation was making him weird. He needed to call Julius and Elle.

In spite of the dust, the cookware was great. It took hours to get it wiped clean enough to be usable, but cookware with history was cookware that could last into the future. Ludger found himself enjoying the process of unearthing all the pots and pans, determining what was still good, and what needed to be thrown out. He was in desperate need of a shower by the end of it, but the kitchen was finally clean enough to meet his standards.

Grinning victoriously, he tossed the last of his destroyed rags into a garbage bag and froze.

Something new was sitting on the counter, partially obscured by the shadows. It was thick and rectangular: its yellowed pages lovingly worn by time and numerous readthroughs.

An old book of fairytales.

Ludger swallowed. Gingerly, he picked it up, and returned it to a bookshelf in the living room.

He wrote it off as coincidence.

**Elize – neglect – 1978**

No one wanted Elize to die.

She was a child. Innocent. Gentle. She collapsed on the porch, malnourished, with a fever of 108. She couldn’t speak, only laid there, perfectly still.

They did what they could. They wet towels and put them on her sweating forehead, encouraged her to chew on whatever herbal medicine stayed persistently growing in the backyard. Rowen had held her hand, so small, so _hot_ , and pleaded with her to stay awake.

When she passed out, still clutching the old worn stuffed creature she wandered in with - they knew they had failed. She would have had a future ahead of her; a beautiful one. She deserved it.

Chronos reached out a hand.

**Ludger – N/A – 2020**

There was no explaining the stuffed…thing.

Ludger first noticed it after cleaning the kitchen, although he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t picked up on it earlier. It was sitting innocuously on the bookshelf in the attic bedroom: an odd creature, not quite an animal, but definitely not a person. It was a faded purple and pink color with wide, beady eyes and two little horns.

Ludger had made a face at it, politely turned it to face the opposite direction, and gone to bed.

When he woke up, the doll was facing him again.

Now, this could have been a fluke. Maybe Ludger had just been tired after work. He had been doing a lot of kneading lately, which always made his arms sore and his sleep heavy. He must have been exhausted and had some sort of waking dream where he turned the thing around.

Yeah.

Ludger picked up the plush doll, found it surprisingly light and almost warm. Swallowing, he took it to the kitchen, set it in the trash, and left for work.

When Ludger got home, it was sitting on his sleeping bag. He stared at it from outside his bedroom door, stomach sinking.

_Why’d you throw me away, Mister?_ The doll said, but its mouth wasn’t moving. Ludger heard the voice, loud, clear - a whisper deep inside his brain.

“Okay,” Ludger replied, surprised and a little proud of how calm his voice was. “No thanks.”

He made eye-contact with the haunted doll on his sleeping bag— _its_ sleeping bag now. Nodded once and shut the bedroom door.

He “slept” on the couch in the living room.

After that, Ludger and the doll lived a peaceable-enough existence; Ludger on the couch with the doll sealed in the one working bedroom. It wasn’t ideal, especially when it came to Ludger’s pride, but growing up he had lost the bed to Rollo enough that losing it to a terrifying demon doll almost felt like an upgrade.

Saturday changed things.

Saturday was Ludger’s one day off. He was looking forward to it. He was going to go to the library, and use their wi-fi. He was going to call Elle and Julius and come up with a lie far more pleasant than his current reality, and for a few blissful moments he was going to _believe it._

On Saturday, Ludger woke up with the doll on his face.

_Why’d you lock me up?_ it asked, tearful.

Ludger did not go to the library.

Ludger went to church.

He was not a religious man, but he was a desperate one. A small holy-feeling local church seemed to be as good of a match for ‘evil horn doll’ as he could think of. He set the doll on the steps of the church, hoping some priest or nun would pick it up to purify it, and drove off.

As the purple and pink creature grew smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror, Ludger couldn’t help but feel as though he made a very big mistake.

He was absolutely correct.

**Alvin – shot – 1980**

Alvin rolled his eyes when people ask about his. It’s not like anyone was actually there to witness the wound happening. He just happened to be passing by with an earned, dirty bullet in his chest that hit a little too close to center.

His legs gave out and he died like an old stray on some wilting flowers in the front lawn. It was what it was, and what it was - was…well, pretty fitting.

He hadn’t gone immediately though, and that’s what had saved him; Elize had found him, first.

As he lay there, blood watering the soil – ha, his first and last time gardening – the little girl had sat next to him and held his hand.

_Are you scared?_ she asked, quietly.

Alvin almost told her to fuck off. Almost shoved her away like he had managed to shove everything else away that actually mattered in his life, but the look in her eyes stopped him from being the person he knew he was.

_Nah,_ Alvin had found himself replying. _I’ll tell you a secret, kid: world’s probably better off without someone like me in it._

_It’s not very nice to say that about yourself._

Faith. How long had it been since someone had looked at him with that in their eyes?

_Where are you from?_ he dodged. _You should hurry home and stop wasting time worrying about me. Nice little girl like you shouldn’t have to see something gross like this._

_You’re dying, though…Aren’t you scared of being alone?_

Finally, he could tell a lie that could help rather than hurt. His hand closed around her little one, and he smiled, even as a tear stubbornly made its way down his cheek.

_Not at all. I’ll be fine. Run along, squirt._

He wasn’t, but to his eternal gratefulness - she didn’t.

“Being a ghost isn’t _so_ bad,” Elize heard Alvin say one night, a few years later, after he had read her some new book Rowen had unearthed. “I don’t think I was the kind of guy that could’ve been trusted to live a long, happy life, so I guess it’s nice to have that pressure off.

**Ludger – N/A – 2020**

When he walked through the door of his mansion, Ludger knew he fucked up.

A six-foot tall man wearing a flowing black and orange scarf was resting his elbow on the unstable railing of the central staircase. He had his cheek in his hand– the portrait of casual boredom. One of the locked doors at the top of the stairs was wide open behind him and, to Ludger’s surprise, fully-furnished and lovingly maintained.

The stranger looked like he had been staring at the entrance for god knows how long, backlit by the amber glow of the light shining from the room behind him. Ludger who considered himself to be of a decent, unembarrassing, height felt positively _puny_ in this man’s menacing shadow.

“Ah,” Ludger articulated, and quickly turned around to step back outside.

He reached for the door, pulling it open, and felt the handle pry itself out of his fingers and slam shut.

_Fuck,_ Ludger thought, very, very clearly.

The man laughed, seeming to look past Ludger in a way that was completely unnerving.

“Nice one, kid. Love the spirit!” he said, grinning wide.

“I didn’t do anything,” Ludger clarified. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Wasn’t talking to you, Ludger,” the tall man replied, and shit, how did he know Ludger’s name?

The man wasn’t looking at him to receive Ludger’s questioning stare, however. He was looking _behind_ him at the open door, and at a place at the bottom of the other staircase. He rolled his eyes, nodded. Shook his head. His focus was clearly so divided, Ludger considered trying the front door again, but didn’t want to risk angering the man or whatever else he was clearly engaging with.

He planted his feet, not giving this guy the satisfaction of watching him squirm in the entryway. If he was going down– it wasn’t as a coward. He cleared his throat to get the man’s attention, meeting his eyes in a way he hoped was brave and not stupid.

“Take it easy, _I’m not going to hurt you_ ,” the stranger emphasized, lifting the words like they felt unnatural on his tongue, like someone had told him to say them. It did not inspire confidence. “But you and I do have a problem. Can you guess what it is?”

A few _problems_ came to mind, most of them having to do with the threatening man, but Ludger could make an educated guess.

“We’re both living here?”

“That’s true, but no– I don’t really care about that. We’ve had worse.”

How was the fact that this man was _living_ in the mansion Ludger purchased not a problem? Ludger stared, dumbly. The man sighed, raising his hands above his shoulders in a shrug so casual and so demeaning, Ludger felt like a dumb child being scolded, not by a teacher, but by the school _bully_ who had somehow developed some basic standards.

“Let me put it like this, house crasher: you better hope that you didn’t do anything to the little spud.”

Ludger stared vacantly, before thinking of the tiny creature on the long stone steps of the church. “The…doll?”

_Teepo!_ Something yelled, loudly, abruptly. The shout tore through Ludger’s head like he’d been smacked. He flinched back, clutching his ears as his back slammed against the wood door.

“Easy now, let’s not melt the guy, yet – I’m not done roughing him up,” the stranger said.

_Yet!?_ Ludger wanted to cry. Was _melting_ something that was possible? Was _melting Ludger’s brain_ really on the table, here?

He sucked in a breath, trying to will his heart to calm down, trying to gain any sense of peace over the blood rushing in his head. So much for being brave; flight instinct had kicked in, but it wasn’t like he could run away. The door was stuck shut behind him, probably by the same mysterious force that kept the upper rooms of the house sealed. That left him with only two other options: try to plead his case or try to _fight_ his way out to the back door. He looked at the man on the stairs: muscular, young, threatening. Possibly armed, judging by the holster at his waist.

Pleading it was.

“I didn’t hurt the…doll,” Ludger said, slowly. “It’s fine, I swear.”

_It’s not fine!_

**_You kidnapped him!_**

_He’s probably so scared!_

**_Where is he, man?_ _Hand him over!_**

Mercifully, this time the voice didn’t feel like it was coming from Ludger’s head. Each statement came from a different area of the room. The vase beside Ludger, the couch, the high ceiling, the floorboards. It was as though various parts of the house itself were talking to Ludger, and it was dizzying. Was it one person, throwing their voice around the room? Multiple people? It seemed to be one continuous thought, but there were definitely _two_ separate voices addressing him.

The man with the scarf was laughing. “Man, you should see the look on your face, Ludger. This is a real kodak moment for sure.”

A… _kodak moment_? Ludger thought, somewhat hysterically. Was it the 80s? Who said that still?

The man slowly made his way down the stairs, and Ludger pressed himself further against the door like he could phase through it.

“Well, you heard the kid. Where’s Teepo, if you didn’t throw him away?”

“I…took him to a church—”

The vase next to Ludger threw itself onto the floor and shattered.

**_My body! My soft, squishable, body!_**

“Miss Elize!”

A different voice this time. An old man in a blue tailcoat was abruptly next to Ludger, holding onto the arms of a weeping child in a floor length gown. She couldn’t have been much older than Elle.

“He just wanted to be your friend!” the girl, Elize, cried. “Why would you do that to him!? You took his body!”

**_Body-stealing thief! He’s a body-stealing thief!_**

For all the terror that had filled Ludger’s veins so strongly before, now he just felt…guilty. A child was yelling at him. That wasn’t unusual, but he didn’t usually feel like he _deserved_ it.

_Body-stealing thief_ was certainly nothing he expected to be called in his lifetime.

“Let’s go to the room, Miss Elize. Allow the others to take care of this...” The old man whispered. His voice was surprisingly gentle. Elize sniffled, loudly, and Ludger’s heart ached.

They both disappeared.

“Well I guess that takes care of that,” the man on the staircase said, voice oddly hollow. When Ludger turned to face him, he was gone. Ludger could still hear his voice, however, echoing through the entrance, clear as day.

_You really screwed yourself over here, eh Ludger? It’s a shame – most of us really did want to like you._

“What—what are you planning to do?”

_Nothing you didn’t do to us. You took something of ours, I’ll take something of yours. An eye for an eye, but it’s nothing personal._

_That’s enough._

Ludger paled.

“Aha! This’ll work.”

_Alvin, I said that’s enough._

The small jingle of a familiar chain drew Ludger’s attention. The stranger with the scarf was now standing a few feet in front of him with a pocket watch hanging from his fingers. Dread pooled in Ludger’s stomach.

The watch had belonged to Julius at first. Ludger could remember the long childhood mornings spent looking at it while Julius wandered around their apartment getting his files in order for work. On his eighth birthday he had asked Ludger to come up with some present he wanted, and Ludger had asked for the watch. Julius had shaken his head and laughed: _Maybe when you’re older, and I know you won’t lose it._

He had finally given him the pocket watch when Ludger was 21. It hadn’t been a special day; it wasn’t his birthday or a holiday of any kind. It had just been some random Tuesday in October. Ludger had been feeling the weight of the classic Kresnik bad luck and was feeling down on himself. Julius had simply set the pocket watch next to him on the desk.

_Take good care of it,_ he had said. Ludger had never felt more undeserving, or more trusted. He almost always wore it on his person, but he had taken it off for polishing and maintenance yesterday and left it on the kitchen counter to dry.

Now it was being held hostage by a _ghost_. Ludger hadn’t taken care of it. Ludger had fucked up, again.

“Look, please,” Ludger said, weakly. “You can have whatever you want, just not that.”

“That would be the opposite of the point I’m making here. This is something you don’t want to lose, and that’s what makes this fair.”

Ludger flinched. 

“Alvin stop. This wasn’t part of our plan.”

A young man in a white lab coat was standing in front of Ludger. Ludger really figured he should have been surprised, but at this point seeing yet another ghost just pop into physical existence filled him with a dull sense of ‘oh yeah, that’s happening’. 

“Still such a stick-in-the-mud. You’d think you’d be less trusting after what you’ve been through, Jude.”

“Don’t.”

The young man, Jude, narrowed his eyes before disappearing. Alvin frowned, looking partially regretful, and Ludger realized his hand was now empty. The watch—where did it—?

Jude was standing in front of him again. He took Ludger’s fist and pressed the pocket watch into it. Ludger was surprised to find his skin solid and…warm?

“Here. Take this and go. I’m sorry for the trouble, Ludger. I wish we could have made things work.”

Just like that, he was gone again. In fact, both of them were. The whole house was as silent as it was the day Ludger bought it. For a moment, he looked straight ahead, wondering if all of this was just some exhaustion-fueled hallucination.

The door opened behind him, held open by the old man in the tailcoat. He was frowning.

“Do you have everything you need?” he asked.

_No,_ Ludger thought, even as he nodded, body completely numb. _I really need a drink._

“You’d best be on your way then.”

“Right…” He walked through the door, and found the older man looking at him sadly.

“Please forgive Alvin and Miss Elize. Teepo is very dear to all of us, precisely because he is so important to the young miss. His loss will be felt.”

The same guilt from before started stewing in Ludger’s stomach.

“I’m…sorry,” Ludger found himself saying.

The old man smiled sympathetically, and the door shut behind Ludger with a definite snap.

**Jude – suffocation – 2019**

One year ago, a white van pulled onto the grassy front lawn of the mansion. It had no license plate or windows. An axe sat in the back seat, and the driver had empty eyes.

Origin did not approve. He sensed the serial killer’s malevolent intent immediately and passed the information onto Chronos. No one really knows how Chronos took care of the man, but it wasn’t nicely, and it wasn’t fast.

Origin was glad, relieved even, to have noticed him.

He wished he had noticed the _other_ man in the van’s trunk.

Unlucky Jude Mathis: a kind-hearted grad student, was unconscious, tied up, and gagged in the heat of summer. His death had been long and painful, but thankfully, Jude didn’t remember it. He was a little hazy after, as everyone is, unable to recall the face of the man who captured him – only that he had seemed wounded and asked for help. Jude remembered so little about the situation, he had even asked if he had been able to assist the gentleman.

_That_ had been an awkward conversation.

Laughing, a month later, he had confided to the other ghosts that his boss had called him “terminally charitable” just the week before he died.

His boss was right. Although, Jude doubted he meant for the phrasing to be quite so literal. 

**Ludger – N/A – 2020**

Ludger knocked on the door to his own mansion. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but no one answered. His back hurt. Turns out haunted mansion wasn’t really wasn’t his last option: park bench was. Ludger missed his sleeping bag.

He knocked again, a bit louder, and received no response. It should have been a sign. Kicked out of his haunted house by _ghosts_ — Ludger should have _moved_ _on_ with his life.

This was the sort of thing people were supposed to avoid. People weren’t supposed to come back to haunted houses because they had working plumbing and the ghosts weren’t _that_ bad. But hey, people weren’t supposed to drop an ice cube and kick it under the fridge, or microwave cup noodles, either. Different strokes.

Ludger still needed a place to stay, and before yesterday it hadn’t been all that awful really. Maybe they could strike a deal.

“What are you doing?” The man in the lab coat—Jude, Ludger remembered, was now standing on the porch. He had appeared out of nowhere, and was watching Ludger with a curious, slightly incredulous, expression.

Ludger felt himself flush, opened his mouth to elaborate, and then realized the words didn’t really matter. He held the weird horned doll out, and Jude’s eye’s widened.

“Teepo…? I thought you said you dropped him off at a church.”

“I guess they didn’t want it. I think it might have had something to do with the horns,” Ludger joked. It wasn’t the best time to joke, but it sure happened anyway. It was definitely an easier explanation than what actually happened: that Ludger, half-asleep, had stumbled into the church asking for “his daughter’s” missing alien-thing.

Jude’s face scrunched, half-amused, half-appraising. “Don’t let—"

“They’re not horns, they’re ears!”

Ludger just about jumped out of his skin. The little girl was beside him, in the same long purple dress as before.

Jude shook his head. “Ah, too late.”

_How ignorant! How rude!_

The plush doll was speaking directly into Ludger’s head again. It was unnerving, but harmless enough.

“S-Sorry?” Ludger offered.

Judging by Elize’s face, it was the right idea to apologize. She tilted her chin up, clearly trying to look taller than she was. The sight of it was familiar and flooded Ludger’s chest with honest warmth. He missed Elle. This little girl seemed a little more formal than his daughter though. She certainly had better posture.

“We can forgive you this time, since you brought Teepo home, but we haven’t forgotten it was all your fault he got lost in the first place.”

_I’m watching you, little buddy!_

Ludger found himself smiling. “Much appreciated, Miss Elize.”

“Um, please call me Elize,” Elize replied, seeming a little flustered at the formality. Definitely different from Elle. “You must have been talking to Rowen.”

_He’s the only one that can call her Miss Elize! If anyone else does it – that’s just weird!_

To Ludger’s surprise, the plush doll floated out of his arms, levitating by Elize’s left shoulder. Ludger stared at it blankly, body still trying to process the whole ‘ghosts are real’ thing. Jude looked between the doll and Ludger for a moment before opening the door.

“We should get inside before anyone sees us,” Jude said. He glanced at Ludger. “If you want to.”

What was stopping him? He came here to make a deal, or at the very least get his sleeping bag back. Floating dolls wouldn’t stop him now.

The house looked the same, except for the fact that now all the locked doors were fully open. Each room was decorated meticulously: Ludger could catch a glimpse of posters and plants in some rooms, as well as various other creature comforts.

A pale man Ludger didn’t recognize from the previous night was looking out one of the windows on the second story, a canary resting on his palm.

“That…explains the birds,” Ludger said.

The pale man faced him and Ludger was struck by how absurdly long his bangs were. They covered his eyes in an eccentric curtain, but he wore a pleasantly placid smile on his face.

“Welcome back Ludger,” he whispered. He was standing far away, at the top of the stairs, and yet his voice rang with such gentle clarity he might as well have been standing directly across from Ludger. Almost against his will, Ludger felt himself relax. Something about this guy screamed that he wouldn’t hurt him — wouldn’t hurt anyone.

It was strange, Ludger was in a haunted house, surrounded by ghosts, but this was the first person that felt…well, genuinely spirit-like.

“Uh. Thank you, uh…”

“You may call me Origin,” the man said, although, now that Ludger was looking at him properly, he didn’t really look like a _man_. He seemed somehow younger and older than that word — genderless and unplaceable.

“I appreciate your cleaning the kitchen,” Origin said. “We had let it deteriorate for far too long but seeing as how none of us eat it was difficult to get motivated.”

“Hey, that’s a little harsh…I make coffee sometimes,” Jude spoke up.

_Jude you haven’t made coffee in months!_

Jude jumped, Teepo having popped up beside him. He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling in a very human, bashful way. “Has it really been that long…?”

“It has,” Elize replied. “Teepo knows these things.”

“You…can eat?” Ludger asked and felt eight pairs of eyes on him all at once. He was overtaken with the impulse to apologize. Weirdly, he didn’t feel terrified surrounded by ghosts, so much as awkward – like he was visiting a foreign country and making a thousand little faux pas. 

“Our bodies are still capable of taste and digestion,” Jude explained. “Actually eating, however, is optional.”

“Optional eating,” Ludger repeated, the chef and cheapskate within him jousting for the right to an opinion. “That’s...pretty weird for ghosts, huh?”

“It’s a marvel,” Jude said. “Although…I’m not entirely sure ghosts would be the ideal descriptor for us—”

_Oh nooooo, don’t get him staaaaarted!_ Teepo cried, flying behind Ludger. _Not another lecture!_

Elize flushed. “Teepo just means that Jude can talk for a while about these things.”

_Learning is cool, but ghost stuff is so BORING…_

“Hey, he brought it up…but I’ll keep it brief, don’t worry,” Jude said, smiling. “Are you familiar with the concept of liminality?”

“Liminality?” Ludger inquired, politely trying to avoid looking at the way Teepo had thrown himself onto Origin’s lap in despair. He covered his laugh as a cough into his hand. “I…can’t say I am.”

“In anthropology,” Jude began, holding up a finger with the practiced ease of a professional lecturer; Ludger smiled a bit. “Liminality is that quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, before any transition takes place.”

_Origin we’re dying again…!_ Teepo cried.

Origin rested a hand on the stuffed thing’s head. “Jude so rarely gets to speak on his theories. Let’s allow him this, Elize.”

Elize went red, her hands politely folded in front of her. “I—I didn’t say anything.”

Jude frowned a bit at Ludger, as if to say _are you just humoring me?_ Ludger did his best to look genuinely interested. He was, really, but he was also completely lost. The young scientist continued— slower this time.

“Basically, it’s the _between_ of two separate states. In our case: between the states of being alive and being dead. Ghosts are usually portrayed by most media as completely physically dead. They’ve left their bodies behind and exist as some sort of other incorporeal existence. That’s not us.”

Ludger nodded, kind of getting it. Kind of. Jude seemed to light up at Ludger’s simplistic reaction.

“We are corporeal _and_ incorporeal _and_ neither of those things. _Between_. Just as human and physical as we once were, but no longer needing to worry about any sort of internal body upkeep. It’s more accurate to say that we’re not ghosts, but dead people residing in _liminality_. Uh, not moving on to the next part of the dying process. In short: not ghosts, but liminal persons.”

“But…how?” Ludger asked. “How is something like that possible?”

“Chronos,” Origin said, and in that one word, Ludger could hear hundreds of years of fond affection. He raised an eyebrow, flashing back to high school Latin. Time?

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? The prodigal son returns!”

Teepo was up in a second at the new man’s voice, launching himself into his arms.

_Alvin help! Jude’s at it again!_

“Not even a ‘how-are-you’? I’m wounded,” Alvin shrugged, punting Teepo half-heartedly across the room, where he just narrowly avoided crashing into the wall.

“That’s mean, Alvin!” Elize huffed.

_Argh! I should’ve known Alvin wouldn’t help!_

“What’s this now?” Alvin asked, casually tossing an arm around Jude who rolled his eyes and shrugged him off. The tall man glanced at Ludger, who swallowed, expecting to see some of the anger from the previous day. Alvin winked instead.

“Hiya Ludger. Looks like you brought the old care bear back— gotta say, I didn’t see that coming. Man, when is Rowen going to be _wrong_ about something?”

_More like ‘when is Alvin gonna be right about something?’_ Teepo mumbled, Ludger felt the floating doll peeking out from somewhere behind his shoulder. He…was never going get used to that.

_Nobody watches Care Bears anymore, old man!_

“Oh, _ouch_ ,” Alvin said, “Found the chink in my armor there, spud. Still, those are some bold words for a stuffed animal hiding behind a broke chef.”

“Hey…” Ludger mumbled, but what he meant was, _Was it that obvious?_ He turned to Jude, who was smiling at him in a small, sympathetic way. Yup, Ludger was pathetic and even the ghosts— er, _liminal people_ could tell.

“My, my, things are certainly lively again,” the old man in the tailcoat announced. He was sitting on the couch, where he had definitely not been visibly sitting before. Elize jumped, and Teepo made a loud yelping sound.

“Rowen, you startled me!”

_How are you so sneaky!?_

“Years of practice,” Rowen replied, a knowing glint in his eye. “What’s the fun in being a ghost if you can’t do some basic haunting?”

Ghost. Ludger looked at Jude, who shrugged.

“Believe it or not, the phrase ‘liminal person’ has not caught on with this group.”

“And it never will, kid. Better give it up now, while you still have dignity,” Alvin snickered.

“Hey…”

Rowen laughed, standing up. “Well, I do believe we have a couple of formalities in order: welcome back Teepo—”

_Thank you, thank you, it’s good to be ba_ —

“—and a sincere welcome back to Ludger, too.”

— _I wasn’t finished!_

The _welcome back_ was unbelievably strange, but…nice, really. Ludger rubbed the back of his neck. It did feel, weirdly, like coming home.

“Thanks.”

“Gang’s all here,” Alvin said. “Our motley island of misfit ghosts with our resident human.”

“Guess so,” Ludger forced a small laugh. He almost ended it there, but shook his head, finally deciding to ask. “Is it okay if I continue to stay here? I can sleep on the couch like before.”

“Park bench not treating you well?” Alvin joked. Ludger winced.

“Oh man, really?” Alvin crowed. “I was joking, but you really did sleep on a park bench, huh _.”_

“That’s not very nice,” Elize stepped in; Teepo at her side. “He’s having a hard time.”

_We’ve all seen his bank account_ — _show some class, Alvin!_

Ludger was mortified. They’d seen _what_?

“Teepo,” Jude scolded. “He really didn’t have to know that information.”

Origin replied over the bickering group and the ringing in Ludger’s red, red ears.

“Yes Ludger, if you would like to you are free to stay with us here.”

“I…yeah. Thanks,” Ludger replied. Somehow it didn’t seem like much of a relief anymore.

“Are you concerned you’ll be trapped in the same state as the others?” Origin asked. “Do not worry. As long as you remain alive, their states will not affect yours.”

Ludger actually didn’t even consider that. He swallowed. “Oh, great, thanks.”

Rowen was smiling at him in a way that felt…unmistakably _pitying_. Ludger ducked his head, ashamed, and Rowen patted his back. It was almost nice in a weird, paternal way. Hazily Ludger realized he was far more embarrassed about this group having seen the negative balance on his bank account, rather than the fact they were all partially dead. Nobody was perfect, but he really should raise his standards just a bit.

“It seems we’re all in transitionary states. It’s the least we can do to help each other out,” Rowen said. “I do hope that this time you’ll take to my recommended reading properly.”

Ludger remembered the ancient book of fairytales, and smiled slightly.

“Rowen gives great recommendations!” Elize cheered.

_And we have all the books, so you won’t even have to pay for anything!_

“Teepo…” Jude sighed, hand on his forehead.

“What?” Elize mumbled, sharing a glance with the plush toy. “It’s a good thing, right?”

Hopelessly embarrassed, but no longer homeless. Ludger forced an uneasy smile at the group of ghosts. His new roommates, he figured.

“Thank you all. I’ll uh, do my best.”

 **Chronos – N/A – The Dawn of Time**

Chronos _was_ time. He was everywhere, nowhere, constant, flowing, endless; he had nothing but patience, nothing but existence. He was all the _world_ and _everything in it_ , and yet somehow these humans had managed to wear his endless endurance to its limit.

They were just so _stupid_.

Origin’s menagerie — exhausting, but Origin liked them.

Beyond that Chronos, quite simply, didn't give a fuck.

**Ludger – N/A – 2020**

The shopping bags in Ludger’s hands were dangerously close to emptying all over the entryway. He should have just gone ahead and done multiple trips, but Mimi had kept him late and Elle and Julius were set to join them at six and Ludger had to get dinner on, _stat_!

Car keys in his teeth, unsanitary but whatever, Ludger juggled the bags in his hands and pushed open the door with the elegant combo of his elbow and nose.

Jude was on him in seconds.

“Ludger you shouldn’t try to carry all that alone!” he fussed, steadying Ludger’s hands and catching one of the brown paper grocery bags that was dangerously close to tipping off Ludger’s jenga tower of purchases.

“Sorry,” Ludger flushed a little as their hands brushed and Jude tutted, carrying all the energy of an adorable put-upon grandmother in a youthful ghost-scientist’s body.

“It’s okay, I’m just glad nothing fell—”

_LUDGER!!!!!!!_

Jude spoke too soon, Teepo launched himself from the second story of the house, headbutting Ludger in the chest and causing a ripe tomato to plummet to the floor.

“ _Teepo_!” Jude groaned before Ludger even had the chance.

His heart sank, imagining the squishing sound and the mess he didn’t have time to clean up when the tomato vanished, mid-air. Alvin leaned against the doorframe to the kitchen, eying the tomato dubiously.

“Tomatoes again, Ludger? I’m not one to complain but when they’re every meal…”

“They’re Julius’s favorite!” Elize piped up. “And um. Sorry about Teepo. He’s…really excited to see Elle again.”

_Elize is a big sister now! Friends forever!_

“Elle’s excited to see you both too, she can’t wait to live here,” Ludger smiled, relieved to not be mopping up tomato juice.

Elize beamed at him, and quickly accepted a grocery bag from Jude, who had made impressive progress unloading Ludger, but had definitely taken too much on himself. Before long, Ludger was only holding one bag, which was swiftly pulled from his hands.

“You have flour in your hair, Ludger,” Rowen provided. “Perhaps you should get tidied up before worrying about unloading the groceries?”

Shoot. Ludger flushed. “Do I really?”

Rowen produced a pocket mirror, holding it to Ludger’s face. Sure enough, definitely flour.

“Go, clean up,” Rowen smiled. “Allow me to get dinner started. It has been so long since I’ve prepared a meal, I would hate to let my skills rust.”

“Thanks Rowen; I appreciate it.”

_Is there anything Rowen can’t do?_

A fair question, Ludger thought, glancing at Teepo as he passed as if to say, ‘probably not’, while Rowen waved the praise off with a humble smile. Alvin had already taken a few grocery bags from Elize and Jude and was working on unloading the kitchen; everyone moving like a well-oiled machine.

It was certainly a step up from Elle and Julius’s first visit, Ludger thought, just the memory of Julius sitting on the couch, completely pale and whispering “ _ghosts???”_ enough to draw a small exhausted smile from his face.

When Ludger walked up the stairs to wash his face in the restroom, one of the windows closed loudly. He rubbed his neck, grateful but unable to shake the idea that Origin was a _little_ mad at him, even though he wore the same placid smile as always.

When he had asked Origin if he could close the windows, just for today, and maybe let the birds outside, he was pretty convinced he was going to be wiped off the face of the earth; the look the pale spirit had given him made Ludger feel like he failed the most fundamental of basic human tasks. Oh well, it was a given to have some friction when living together like this. It was pretty small, considering, but Ludger sure did wish he carried friction with literally anyone other than Origin, considering the whole “dating the spirit of time” thing.

Nothing to worry about there, for now, at least. Chronos didn’t talk to him. Chronos didn’t talk to anyone but Origin, really.

Ludger washed the flour from his hair, and heard the ghosts bickering and cheering downstairs, about whatever he bought for groceries. He had indulged past his usual strict budget and managed to buy everything on their list, an impressive feat considering everyone added to it liberally with incredibly odd and dated requests-- par for the course after being trapped in a house for 60 years or so.

His new job at _Wonderchef Kitchens_ had a promising pay increase and he was feeling generous, and before Elle moved in…well, if there was a time to indulge, it was now.

_Ludger, Alvin’s eating all the chips!!!!_ Teepo yelled, somewhere from downstairs, just as Ludger’s phone buzzed with a text from Julius and Elle, saying they were outside. Next to him, a bird chirped from where it had perched on the bathroom shower curtain.

Ludger just shook his head and laughed at the sheer chaos of the situation, there wasn’t much else he could do, so why not?

Such was life, he figured. Life and whatever came after.


End file.
